NEWS STORY: Judge orders Mississippi district to end school prayer

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-U.S. District Court Judge Neal Biggers on Monday (June 3) ordered a Mississippi school district to end religious activity in the classroom, including vocal prayers heard over the school’s intercom. “The Bill of Rights was created to protect the minority from tyranny by the majority,”Biggers said, adding an apparent reference […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-U.S. District Court Judge Neal Biggers on Monday (June 3) ordered a Mississippi school district to end religious activity in the classroom, including vocal prayers heard over the school’s intercom. “The Bill of Rights was created to protect the minority from tyranny by the majority,”Biggers said, adding an apparent reference to the witchcraft trials of the 17th century:”Indeed, without the benefit of such a document, women in this country have been burned because the majority of their townspeople believed their religious practices were contrary to the tenets of fundamentalist Christianity.” Biggers, who was named to the federal judiciary by President Ronald Reagan, told school officials in the ruling that”they may not facilitate, participate in, endorse, encourage, invite or sponsor classroom prayer by students.” He ordered them to end teaching classes”known as `Bible’ or `A Biblical History of the Middle East’ … (and) the showing of the videotapes `The King is Born,’ `He is Risen,’ and `America’s Godly Heritage’ during American History classes.” The ruling upheld a challenge by Lisa Herdahl of Ecru, Miss., to the Pontotoc County School District’s longstanding practice of allowing prayers over the school intercom during classroom hours and allowing individual classroom prayers before lunch at the district’s 1,300-student North Pontotoc Attendance Center in Ecru.

A Lutheran whose children have attended a Pentecostal Sunday School, Herdahl filed suit against the school district in December 1994 on behalf of her five children. She argued that the school’s prayer practices, its Bible class and the use of religious material in American history classes violated the separation of church and state.


Since filing the widely publicized suit, Herdahl has said that she and her family have received bomb threats and been verbally harassed.

Herdahl complained that one teacher made her then-seven-year-old son, Jason, wear headphones to drown out the sound of the prayers. As another son, David, chose not to attend Bible class, his teacher commented to the class that he did not believe in God. “Overall, we think this is a slam-dunk for religious liberty,”said Elliot Mincberg, general counsel and legal director for People For the American Way, a Washington-based church-state advocacy group that aided Herdahl in the suit.

But Jerry Horton, superintendent of the Pontotoc County School District, expressed confidence that the school could comply with the judge’s ruling, while continuing to offer opportunities for religious expression that would be within the law.”We can handle the court decision guidelines without any difficulty whatsoever,”Horton said.”This school board has never written a prayer, has never forced any student to say a prayer or take a biblical history course,”Horton said.”If a student wants to … engage in religious expression and it does not interfere with the education process, we believe it is protected in the Constitution.” During a three-day trial in March, witnesses testified that Bible classes had been held at the school for more than 50 years and prayers had been heard over the intercom since the 1970s, when the school acquired an intercom.

During the trial, school district officials said the school prayers should continue because a majority of the students and parents are in favor of the practice and that Herdahl was the only person to oppose them.

However, Biggers wrote,”to say that the majority should prevail simply because of its numbers is to forget the purpose of the Bill of Rights.” School officials also contended that the intercom and classroom prayers were initiated by students.

But Biggers said that such prayer”clearly violates the dictates of the Establishment Clause (of the Constitution). Organized prayer in the classroom, where students have no choice but to participate or to conspicuously `step out into the hallway,’ is unconstitutional whether led by students or teachers.”

MJP END ANDERSON

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